But we have the mind of Christ.

Whew! What a long weekend. Out of the 72 hour long memorial day weekend, I was only able to spend 3 of those hours with my family. Most of this was due to the fact that I was at the Fire Station for a cumulative 48 hours.

Things went well on Sunday morning as I filled the pulpit in a neighboring church. I did learn a valuable lesson though. If I am ever asked to preach at another church again, I will ask if they are expecting me to teach Sunday School as well. Next time I won't be surprised when they turn Sunday School over to me.

I must say that it was pretty "freeing" to preach in another church. I didn't know anyone there so I had no worries about who might be offended by the message. It was also not a concern that anyone would wonder about my motives. These factors made it easy to just let the Bible flow!

I did teach on discernment. I was able to use an article from the Omaha newspaper for my illustration. Karen thought I lacked discernment in bringing the story up at church. To fill you in, there was a story about a little boy (8 yrs old) in Omaha that has decided he would rather be a girl. The Catholic school that he attends will not support him so his parents are enrolling him in the Omaha Public School System for next year. They have bought him new outfits (dresses, shoes, and pink clothes) and started calling him Katie rather than Ben.
The fact that Ben would rather be a girl than a boy was not really the issue that I was dealing with in my sermon. Instead I dealt with a couple of letters regarding the story that were published in the paper a few days later. In one letter, a man wrote that he hoped the Catholic Chancellor had misspoken when he stated that people are either male or female and cannot change.
This man went on to say the statement made by the Chancellor was "equal parts ignorance and arrogance". Ignorance because animals can change gender, and arrogance because the purpose of the church is to explain salvation, not to comment on subjects that they know nothing about.

I spent some time talking about the responsibility of believers to strive for holiness. It is also the responsibility of the Pastor to "feed the flock" not just introduce unbelievers to Christ. In our church, our purpose statement is "...to introduce people to Jesus Christ...to instruct them in Christlike maturity, and to inspire them to serve him."

We do have a plethora of churches that are only concerned with the gospel. The New Testament however, has many things to say regarding the growth of the believer after salvation. Our change has only just begun after coming to know Christ. There is still much to learn.
The man writing the letter lacked spiritual discernment.

The first thing required for spiritual discernment is a relationship with Christ. Hebrews 5:1-10

Secondly, in order to have discernment, we need to get past the basics of the gospel and delve into the meat of the Word. Hebrews 5:11 - 6:3

What was the third point? It can be found in I Corinthians 2:9-16

In order to "have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil" I read a second letter.
This was written by a Christian woman. She said that she hoped the Christian community would show support to the family because of their courage in caring for their daughter. She reminded us that the first command is to treat everyone with love and the second is not to judge.